John “Jughead” Pierson, known most prominently, alongside Ben Weasel, as a founding member of Screeching Weasel, has reentered the so-called punk rock spotlight through his new band Semi-Famous. First devised as the fictious subject of Pierson’s not-so-fictitious novel Weasels in a Box, Semi-Famous has been brought to life by the release of Destroy Ourselves, a 14-track pop-punk debut of Rare Bird/ Duck! records featuring the “supergroup” lineup of Ryan Rockwell of Mixtapes, Poli van Dam (formerly of The Bombpops), Billy Brown, and Tyson Cornell.
Based loosely on Screeching Weasel, “Weasels in a Box” toed the line between fictitious dialogue and real-life experience. Now living in Japan, Pierson has scratched his creative musical itch by teaming up with permanent members Rockwell, van Dam, Brown and Cornell, along with other pop-punk heavy hitters such as Dan Vapid.
As a sort of delayed twenty years anniversary for the original release of ‘Weasels in a Box”, not only has Pierson emerged alongside others with Semi-Famous, but the book is being re-released for the very first time on paperback and audiobook, voiced by Pierson.
We touched on a whole lot of interesting stuff during our brief chat including Pierson’s initial encounters with each bandmate, including Billy Brown whose unfortunate passing predated the record’s release.
“[The emotions are] mixed. I mean, I’m very excited,” said Pierson when asked about emotions following his passing and this release. “This got Tyson to actually get to know Billy and put out one of Billy’s unreleased records that finally got the light of the day right before he passed, so I know he was super excited about that. We became family. Him and Poli and Mike and their kid Adler got really close, so it was very sad that we lost him. But in a weird, cosmic way, we still feel like he’s there with us.“
This interview was chock full of great stuff including Pierson really complementing his bandmates, personal favorites off of the record, possible shows surrounding this release, and a whole bunch more. We’ve got the full-length linked below, along with the full interview. Cheers!
So where did this idea come from for bringing this band from your book to life?
Rare Bird Lit came to me with the idea, like hey, why don’t we make your fictional band real? So we did, they’re actually re-releasing the paperback too, but the audiobook is what I’m excited about.
And so what was kind of the turning point then for you deciding to take this to a full-scale record?
Probably just the enjoyment factor, you know? I went to LA and Tyson for Rare Bird Lit has this like amazing studio that they just use for their publishing company. So when sitting there, Ryan Rockwell, who I’ve always wanted to work with from the Mixtapes, drove out and that was exciting. No, he wasn’t there for that one, but he wrote a song with me. And then me and Billy Brown, who was in LA, recorded it. And afterwards, I just had so much fun. Then Christopher Applegren jumped on to do the art and my friend, Paul Russell, who did the Weasel logo was all excited. So we just decided to, I asked Tyson if we could do another, like a full length, and he said, yeah, of course. So it was just all about excitement level. There wasn’t like any big kind of a financial or any other backing behind it besides everyone was just excited.
When I hear the term supergroup, I’m kind of hesitant sometimes because I’ve heard supergroups before where it’s obviously one guy writing the songs, just a side project for this one band. And I didn’t get that at all with this. It seems like so many different people were contributing to it. You weren’t hearing just Mixtapes, you weren’t hearing just Bombpops, you weren’t hearing just Screeching Weasel. It just sounds like so many people are contributing.
I agree. I don’t even like using the word supergroup, I mean, ever. Even the Mopes was considered a supergroup too, but we were just a bunch of friends hanging out and having fun. So I think this was the same thing. I just was really excited to get Poli involved too. And I did a podcast with her and she had announced that she quit the Bombpops and I always had that in the back of my head. I was like, well, I got to get her to do something.
Has she been doing much since Bombpops?
Well, she took a long break because she had a lot of hard life things happen that she’s more open about now. You know, she has diabetes and it was getting rough. So she started doing a solo project, I think she’s opening up for some of the NOFX shows, I think in LA. I think it’s just called the Poli Van Dam Band. But yes, I agree with what you were saying and I’m glad you picked that up. We’ve just agreed to do another record in February and Poli’s actually going to be writing now too with her husband, Mike, who is actually a great writer too. So I’m more excited to get even more into that “everyone contributing” sort of idea. Because she was frustrated with that in Bombpops too. All of us had sort of frustrating breaks with our former pop-punk counterparts, so that’s kind of what it was about. And just one more thing on that, when I went to Mass Giorgini to mix and produce it, I had said I wanted everyone’s voices to be equally displayed there. And he says, “well, that’s a really difficult thing to do.” And I said, “well, let’s see how it works, see if we can do that.” Like if Poli and Ryan are singing at the same time, I want them singing at the same time, not like one backing the other. And I think it really shows like that. When me and Billy are singing, it’s featuring both of us, but when it’s Poli and Ryan, it features both of them. That was probably the hardest mixing process of that, trying to figure that all out, how to make that work.
So how did you connect with everybody kind of initially? Was your first thing with Poli with the podcast, or how did you kind of, I guess, connect with her? And then how did she kind of get involved with this project, was it, you just taking note of her leaving Bombpops?
Well, originally, I had been a fan of the Bombpops for years, and then I saw them at the Reduno Festival. But I was disappointed, I just thought they looked a little bit too LA for me to like, kind of like schmoozy on stage and I didn’t like the vibe. But then I just kept on looking over at Poli and go, “that girl, she’s real, she’s the real deal.” So then I went after her to do an interview on the podcast, and after that podcast, it was a done deal, we already felt like family after that. Her husband, Mike, was a huge fan already, so she was already excited. And Ryan, I’ve been wanting to work with him since I heard the Mixtapes years and years and years ago. And then I was oddly doing a puppet show in Cincinnati, I had a job there and I ran into him at a video store, and we just hit it off really well. And I always thought he was underrated like a writer, so I wanted to have him help me and me help him. It was kind of like a mutual helping each other type of thing.
Yeah, what really got me into them was that, I think it was a split. I don’t know, the one song they did with the Direct Hit, “Werewolf Shame”. That’s what initially introduced me to them and I fell in love with those guys. And that ultimately introduced me to some of what Maura Weaver’s released and projects she’s been a part of. I really dig some of her solo stuff.
Yeah, him and Maura had a rough time of it, but they’re both, they’re great musicians. They’ve both gone on to do some great stuff separately.
So I’m curious, a lot of people know you obviously from Screeching Weasel. But writing for this project, has that spurred your creativity elsewhere with any of these other things you’re involved with?
Well, I’ve called myself an artist because that’s how I’ve lived my life for like 45 years. I always use a different media to affect the other media. So like I’ve used now the excitement of the music to spark me to continue working on my new book, they’re all interrelated to me. They’re all, they work together.
Got it, okay. Was this difficult for you writing sort of like a concept album? I know for my songwriting personally, when I’m writing songs, I struggle with a preconceived subject sometimes. I kind of just go wherever the song goes, but I start to struggle when I have something in mind initially to write about. Was that a struggle at all with you?
Well, this is a concept in the fact that it was sparked by the Weasels in a Box and influenced by Screeching Weasel, but the songs as a structure aren’t really the concepts together, you know. But it is a false label, like Duck Records based on Lookout and the name is even based on Kill the Musicians. So it does have that conceptual feel, but I wouldn’t consider it like musically conceptual. But it was difficult for me because I promised myself, when I started even Blackouts, that I wasn’t gonna do a pop-punk band, a straightforward pop-punk band because I just, I worked with some of the best. Ben and Vapid are some of my idols as to songwriters and I didn’t even want to compete with them for years and years and years. But when Tyson approached me with this idea, I was like, oh, okay, maybe I’m ready to try it. I did a little bit of dipping my feet in the water with the Mitochondriacs, which was more of like a angry, comical, just a release of energy I had. And then I was like, okay, I can do this. So I felt a little bit more confident going into it, especially with Ryan and Poli and Billy by my side, who you might not know him, but [Billy] was in The Unseen and a lot of other great hardcore bands, Crash and Burn. But he passed away. He passed away in January, so we lost him.
What kind of emotions and feelings are you having with releasing this after he’s passed?
They’re mixed. I mean, I’m very excited. He had quit music. He’s another one that had kind of quit music for a while and had some bad times, so we were all looking forward to the release of it. And this got Tyson to actually get to know Billy and put out one of Billy’s unreleased records that finally got the light of the day right before he passed, so I know he was super excited about that. We became family. We all flew out to Chicago and did two shows, the only shows we’ve done, and Billy was very sick then, so we were all gathered around him, and we really became a family. Him and Poli and Mike and their kid Adler got really close, so it was very sad that we lost him. But in a weird, cosmic way, we still feel like he’s there with us.
Do you have any favorites off the record? Any that Billy contributed too that you guys really like?
We were actually just now working on a video for “Obvious”, which I think it’s a great song that Ryan wrote, and when Poli came in to sing it with him, I was like, oh, yeah, this is really good. I think I sensed that Ryan was missing writing for a woman’s voice. Him and Maura’s parts together are so great that I made sure that he would write some songs with him and Poli. So that one, I think, really strikes a nice balance between the two of them singing together. And of my songs, I really like “What’s a Metaphor?” It was kind of like a clash, early Screeching Weasel influence, and it was talking about a friend of mine that passed away. And then it related to Billy, who was dealing with cancer, so singing that with him was kind of intense. So it has a lot of powerful memories for me in it, and I think it has that intensity in it. I was trying to do a part from “Slogans”, that was my favorite part that kind of got buried in the record My Brain Hurts, so I wrote that one to sort of bring that part out a little bit more. So it has a bunch of different elements in a minute and a half song, so I like that.
What do you think the record gained from Dan Vapid contributing?
Probably one of the best songs that I couldn’t have wrote myself. Yeah, and it was really fun to emulate Vapid, because he, I mean, I’ve worked with him for years, but he can get really, really specific. Like he sent many videos and audios of him playing it and showing us how to do things, and we just stuck to that. We pretty much did exactly what he wanted, all the backing vocals were all our ideas, but everything else, even the way he sang it, I tried to emulate how he was singing it, too. It was quite a pleasure to have, to kind of feel like I was working with Vapid again. It’s been years.
It’s really cool seeing his name attached, because I love the guy, I love anything he puts out also. It’s really cool seeing him contribute as well among all these other people. I really, and I’ve enjoyed all the bands that everybody’s been with kind of throughout the years. Are there any kind of scenarios in your life that parallel to any of these songs? Any favorites that you’re referencing, I guess, in some of these songs?
Well, I have, in my art and writing in general, I have a dark side, but I don’t have that dark side like Ben did. And Billy would say that to me, he would actually call me up, he would get drunk and call me in the middle of the night, and be angry that our album doesn’t have enough anger and bitterness in it. So I’m kind of disappointed, because we were gonna work on a song like that. But I felt I got a little bit of that in there. I’m not really big on self-deprecation, but it’s such a big punk thing to do, so I got a little taste of that. Like, even that song, um, I just forgot the name of my own song. It was really short, it’s a love song to my fiancee, Nanako. “There Is Always You”, that’s it. It’s kind of funny, because I wrote it as a love song to Nanako, but it actually, I had that, I got that grit that Ben had sometimes of criticizing himself. So it ended up being like, “yes, I love you because you’ll stick with me because I’m an asshole” type of song, you know? So when I showed it to her, she wasn’t really very impressed with it. “It’s not really a love song, John.” “No, no, no, not really. It’s about being an asshole. I guess that’s fine.”
So this is an interesting question I kind of came up with. I know you said you’re working on another book. Has there ever been any thought, or is there any thought of kind of continuing what Semi-Famous is turning into, continuing that into another book or into a type of series or something else?
Well, there was an idea, and I just don’t know if I can put the work in, but me and Tyson had, he thought the book is like a world to its own, like I did a good job of creating a world is what he told me. So our idea was to kind of get my friends like Dr. Frank and Joe Queer to actually do the bands that I have in the book and actually have a label called Duck Records. So there is some ideas in the back of our head to do that. I wanted to get Kody [Templeman] to do like a Lillington’s-like song. We have the studio, I just haven’t really put enough thought into it, I’m gonna get this record out and then start thinking about it. So there is an idea to build a world, but I don’t know how likely that will be.
So when you mentioned the record in February, is that a Semi-Famous record you’re talking about?
That is, yeah. And we have like seven or eight of the songs already written. Poli’s working with her husband, Mike, and then me and Ryan sort of write together now, like me and Gov did with Even in Blackouts, we sort of share ideas. We’re all flying out in February. We probably will do a show sometime during that time too. It’ll be recorded at the same studio, it’s the Rare Bird lit recording studio that they have in the middle of nowhere, down the street from where Charles Manson’s farm was.
Yeah, that kind of answers my next question. I was gonna ask if this was like a one and done thing or if this was more than that, more than just a band for this record, for this book.
Yeah, we’re all getting older now and there’s not enough money in punk for us to like survive on it. So we can’t, I don’t think any of us could commit to it as like a full-time band, but there definitely is, I was surprised that Poli was so excited about continuing on. And then I knew Ryan and I would do it, but Tyson’s excited and Mike, Poli’s husband, is joining to take Bill’s place as also another, he’s another great singer. So yeah, we’re gonna be doing something, but we don’t know to what degree. And, you know, Polly has her whole other thing, she’s the youngest one and she still has like probably a stupid great career in front of her. So we’re just trying to have her time when we can.
You kind of mentioned it, you said maybe a show here and there. Are there any solidified show plans you’ve got?
No, but we’ll be in the studio from, I think it’s through my birthday, like the 17th of February through the 22nd. And so we will probably have a show maybe on my birthday on the 21st, but it’s not scheduled yet. But that probably will happen.
What about tour thoughts or plans, not necessarily set in stone, but any tour ideas?
Yeah, I mean, I’m in Japan, so I’m the farthest one away. And I’m under a contract here with Universal Studios. So it’s all up to whether I get another contract. I find out in November. So November might be the magic moment before we start announcing things about the band.
Any Japanese shows or American shows?
That’s one of the ideas. Like Tyson is obsessed with Japan and wants to get us all out here. We don’t have anything scheduled, but that’s one of the plans. I’ve done it with Even in Blackouts and I jump shows with lots of friends here. There’s a great Ramones-style band called So-Cho Pistons here that are really great from Hiroshima.
We just had, I had some guys I know that went on tour with Guitar Wolf, which that’s Japan, right?
Yeah, they’re a classic band here. They’ve been doing it forever, but they were incredible, them and Shonen Knife, I think, have been around like the beginning of punk, you know, they’ve been around a long time. High Standard is still around, too. Oh, yeah, I love those guys. They just played with NOFX.
So how did you, I’m interested with Billy Brown. How’d you kind of connect with him initially, had you known him for a while?
I’ve known Billy since, I don’t know, maybe 2000, maybe 2001.Yeah, he was in a band with my drummer from Even in Blackouts, they lived in Boston together and I flew out for a wedding and we kind of hit it off pretty great. Then whenever he was in town with one of his bands, he’d always stay at my house. And then he worked at a bar in LA, and whenever I was out there, I’d just spend the whole night with him, drinking and having a good time. And we always talked about doing something, because he’s a great musician, and also a great singer, too.
And what about with Tyson, was he another guy you’d known for forever?
No, Tyson, the funny thing is, is he’s on the, what do they call it, the inner folder of killer musicians. And he was in a band called Scooby-Dunk, which I didn’t know about, but there is like a small, rabid audience of people that still like those guys. But no, no, Chris Barrows from the Pink Lincolns had put out a photo book about all, I mean, the photos he’s been taking of the bands since like the 70s, and I thought it was done really well. And I talked to Chris about who put this out for you. And he said, this guy, Tyson Cornell. And then Tyson called me and said he’d like to put something out by me. So our relationship was, it was over the phone for quite a few years, and then when I flew out to do the seven-inch, that’s when I actually met him, I think. And he was a good drummer, too, I didn’t even know that.
So what else kind of outside of this do you have going on? Has this kind of taken up most of your time right now?
No, I wish it was. I had music always, for some reason, I’ve been cursed with being in, I think, really good bands, but cursed with either being with someone who doesn’t like playing, or doesn’t want to anymore, or it’s just no one likes the bands. Also we’re all over the world, so it’s kind of frustrating, so I don’t do that as much. But I am working on my new book, which is called A Plight of the Lampoons. I’m pretty excited about that, it’s gonna be another year, still, at least.
Is there any other music stuff you’re kind of dipping your toes in?
No, me and Eddie from the Mitochondriacs are talking about doing something just to keep him busy, because, you know, with the Cobain’s. He’s another one that’s cursed with bands that don’t seem to want to do anything. So we play around every once in a while, and me and Gubb keep hemming and hawing about doing another record, too, but yeah. But Liz just had another baby, so it’s a little bit more busy. It’s a little bit more difficult, so not really. This is kind of the thing I’m writing for, the next record.
Well, that’s pretty much everything I’ve got written down. Was there anything else you wanted to add, kind of, about what’s coming up?
About the record, my last words about that is that I had, it’s probably the, with Even in Blackouts, I didn’t care as much what people thought. This one, for some reason, I cared more, and yet, I could also listen to it and not have any idea if people would like it or not. So it was probably the most, like, black sheep of all the records I’ve done, where I just do not know whether it’s good or not. I don’t usually, like I said, I’ve stayed away from pretty straightforward pop punk for a long time, and I just, I’m excited to see what, hear what people think, but it was really difficult for me to admit to trying to write like that again. I feel like I’m exposing myself.
Well, I can tell you, I’ve enjoyed it. It was fresh, I couldn’t tell who wrote it, if that makes sense. I couldn’t tell, oh, Poli wrote this song, this is a Mixtapes song, I couldn’t tell any of that with any of it. It’s very fresh, and I really enjoyed it.
Oh, well, thank you, and thank you, Nate, that means a lot to me, because that’s what we were trying to do.
Well it was just, it was a pleasure talking with you, I really appreciate you taking the time and I wish you the best of luck with everything you’ve got going, not just in music, but your other projects as well.
Oh, thank you, thanks a lot. I appreciate the questions, I’ll see you later.
